The attempts to roll back the gains of the women’s movement have been going on for a long time now, almost immediately after Roe v. Wade was passed, but it has become increasingly escalated lately with attacks now being leveled against not only reproductive rights (including contraception) but women’s health care, and even programs for victims of violence and rape being dismantled. It is time for us to stand up and take action to help raise the awareness that this onslaught is about patriarchal dominance and religious tyranny, not “religious freedom”.

Women are steadily making gains in other parts of the world, one of the most heartening examples being the women of the Congo, who have risen up in the face of wartime torture against the violence that has been directed at them, demanding an end to rape.[1] We see women making strides towards freedom in the Middle East with Tunisia granting equal rights to men and women, and in India, despitemuch discrimination, women currently holding all three of the high offices of President, Speaker of the Lok Sabha, and Leader of the Opposition, ]while here inthe U. S. women are seeing our rights and gains erode and to this day are the most under-represented group in government and the poorest members of society.

Today, in America, we are contending with escalated attacks on women’s human rights like never before, whether it be by redefining rape, slashing funding for planned parenthood, eliminating crucial health screening and services for women, attempting to restrict and even criminalize abortion, denying access to contraception, or doing away with programs to help victims of domestic violence and rape.

The long list of assaults on women’s basic human rights includes the Blunt Amendment, which would have allowed any employer to refuse to cover any kind of health care service by citing “moral reasons”; fetal “personhood” bills; bills requiring ultrasound,includinginvasive vaginal probes, prior to allowing abortions; bills outlawing abortions after 20 weeks; bills allowing health care providers to refuse to perform abortions[2] and hospitals to refuse to perform emergency abortions, even in the case of the mother’s life being at stake in the “Let Women Die Bill” that passed in the U. S. House ofRepresentatives; the defunding of Planned Parenthood, including the Susan V. Komen Foundation dropping planned parenthood funding for cancer screenings; the continuing harassment, arson attacks, bombings and shootings of family planning staff and doctors, four of whom have been murdered between 1993 and 2009.[3]

In view of such attacks, one might think we lived in a country ruled by an Ayatollah rather than in the United States where there is supposed to be a government of, for, and by the people with the separation of church and state. But, as it turns out, the Christian fundamentalists who have made inroads into our government have been steadily blurring this line and are little different from their Muslim counterparts in their determination to restrict the freedoms of their respective female citizens. Patriarchal religion has historically often been friendly to fascism and feudalism and hostile to the values of freedom and enlightenment, particularly of course with regard to women. See article [4] below for a horrific example of this.

Patriarchy is about domination and the abuse of power and we wish to raise the awareness of the public that the war on women is about the attempt to control women’s lives, whether it be by redefining rape, slashing funding for planned parenthood, eliminating crucial health screening and services for women, attempting to restrict and evencriminalize abortion, denying access to contraception, or doing away with programs to help victims of domestic violence and rape. We will not sit by and allow women’s human rights to be treated as if they are expendable or ignore the sexist mentality that fuels these attacks. It is time for us to Occupy Patriarchy and end the War on Women!

Kudos to Queen Vashti! People need to remember that religion has always been at the heart of fascism and feudalism and the enemy of freedom and enlightenment. What is particularly ironic is that the people like Santorum, et al, that want to crow endlessly about promoting their particular brand of religiosity and decry the separation of church and state are the very ones whose rights to practice their religion were (and could be again) guaranteed by it. It was the Danbury Baptists whose persecution by the Anglican church/government Thomas Jefferson took up in his famous letter about this issue. The Baptist Church is the largest denomination in this country and one of the most fundamentalist Protestant sects (they prefer evangelical nowadays) but they are fundamentalists, just like the Muslim jihadists, and behind the war on women’s rights. What is really hilarious is that these are the very people who used to view the Catholic Church as the Beast of Revelations just a few years ago, but now are flocking behind people like Santorum,a Roman Catholic, mainly because they agree on how much they hate the freedom of women! You watch, they will be joining forces with the Islamic fundamentalists eventually in their zeal to repress women. They are the Talibangelicals, whether Baptist, Catholic, or Muslim.